The Blasphemies of Thomas Aikenhead

A startling micro-history of Britain’s last execution for blasphemy Thomas Aikenhead, sometime student of the University of Edinburgh, was in 1697 the last person in Britain to be executed for blasphemy. Michael Braham uses Aikenhead’s case to open a window on tot the world of late 17th-century Edinburgh and Scotland, exploring the core historical themes in a country in transition from confessional Reformation to polite, literary Enlightenment.